In Part 1 of this series we looked at how leaders generate meaningful environments where others can thrive. In Part 2 we explored a leader’s own quest for authenticity. In Part 3 we looked at the role of powerful conversations and a focus on collective success. In Part 4, we’ll examine how meaningful leadership requires truth-seeking based on ethical values.

Meaningful leadership searches for the truth in a complex world. This requires seeing the nuances and moving beyond oversimplified either/or choices. It means investing time and effort in peeling away the irrelevant and the inaccurate to get to the heart of issues.

“Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.”

— Leo Tolstoy

Meaningful leadership requires being willing to live in disequilibrium, without having all the answers.

“To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.”

— Socrates“

On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Meaningful leadership makes a lifetime commitment to learning and competence.

“Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.”

— Albert Einstein

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

Meaningful leadership sees complex issues from multiple perspectives, including the important perspective of what is best in terms of ethical values. Failing to see issues in terms of ethical values means abandoning the guidance system of human civilization.

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

— Marcel Proust

Meaningful leadership uses ethical values to understand difficult issues, digging into intent and impact and revealing the best choices for multiple stakeholders.

Meaningful leadership requires working through discomfort but it is worth the effort. Ask yourself:

How carefully do I excavate complex issues before I make a decision or take a side?

How consistently do I use ethical values as the basis for excavating the grey areas?

What could I do with my teams to help us all get better at basing our thinking process on ethical values?

When leaders stop learning, they generate friction. Professionals who work with a leader who has “put the brakes on learning” are likely to experience conflict and dissatisfaction. A leader’s failure to learn starts a chain reaction that harms individuals and teams.

How a Leader Who Puts the Brakes on Learning Affects a Team

Leader decisions based on outdated information frustrate competent team members and reduce their effectiveness.

Uninformed leader decisions often stray into unethical territory, with the leader pushing forward, pressuring team members to do what they know is not ethical right.

Some highly talented team members working with an uninformed leader begin to look for other work.

Team members pressured to do things they know are not ethically right leave the team to find better working conditions.

The departure of highly talented team members further reduces the effectiveness of the team.

The reputation of the team is damaged, making it hard to attract good people to fill positions.

Positions that remained unfilled put additional pressure on existing team members. More team members may decide to leave to find better leadership.

When leaders put the brakes on learning, it cripples the whole team, starting a downward spiral to ineffectiveness. It damaged reputation and engagement metrics. It affects results.

Ethical Leaders Learn

Responsible leaders know that learning must continue for a lifetime. Only then can they be ready to make ethical choices as they handle the challenges of leadership.

Good drivers don’t drive with the emergency brake on. Good leaders don’t put the brakes on learning.

This week I’m sharing a collection of hand-picked resources that will help you upgrade your thinking. With all of the ethical messes in the news recently, this seems to be the right time to help you focus on PREVENTION as applied to thinking. It’s our thinking, after all, that determines what we decide to do under pressure.

Ethical thinking has many important qualities, and one of them is that it is INTENTIONAL. It doesn’t happen on its own. Passive thinking is not likely to lead to ethical decisions or actions. Ethical thinking has to be intentional, developed and practiced.

Use these resources to develop your ethical thinking skills. After upgrading your skills, you’ll be able to handle ethical issues at a higher level of complexity:

You may already realize that ethical thinking is important, and if you do, I ask you to spread the word. To help you champion the cause in your organizations and on social media, I have included the business case below.

Ethics is an important part of brand value, so leaders need to be ready to model, implement, interpret and teach it. Teaching something to others and guiding them as they apply it requires a much higher level of skill than applying it only in one’s own work. To carry the company’s ethical brand value (EBV) forward, leaders will need to have mastered ethical thinking so they can guide others in how to use it. They will need to understand how ethics drives the economic engine of the company and the risks of a single ethical mistake that can reduce the company’s brand value in minutes.

Leaders are ethical brand ambassadors. They need to be able to handle ethical challenges themselves, AND teach others throughout the organization

To be ready for the higher level requirements of being an Ethical Brand Ambassador, leaders need clear ethical thinking. Here are some of the business reasons why that is so important:

Brand Value and Reputation Directly Impact Financial Results

“A business’s most valuable asset is its good name, its brand and reputation. In a recent survey released jointly by the World Economic Forum and the Fleishman-Hillard public relations firm, three-fifths of chief executives said they believed corporate brand and reputation represented more than 40% of their company’s market capitalization… Strong brand reputational value equals greater profits.”

Keeping ethics at the heart of brand value relies on leaders who do more than just understand ethical thinking and action – they also need to live it and teach it to others throughout the organization.

How will we know if our leadership is “good?” Since there are conflicting opinions about what good leadership includes, we need an understanding of the context to answer this important question.

This week I’m featuring a collection of posts that clear up questions you may have about how to define and practice “good” leadership. This is the kind of leadership that builds high-trust companies and communities. It is the high level leadership that brings out the best in people and engages them in meaningful work.

As you explore these posts, think about the ways you have learned about good leadership and who your role models have been.

We need “good” leadership at every level if we are going to build good organizations. Will our leadership stand the test of time? Will it be considered “good” by others looking back on it 100 years from now?

It is sometimes difficult to sort out “pay to play” awards (you pay someone to say good things about you and give you an icon to put on your website) from legitimateawards (the judging process is objective — if you win you have actually earned it).

“Pay to Play” is On the Rise

Many businesses now provide “perks” if you like them on social media – but did they earn that like? In essence that like becomes a “payment” for the freebie that the customer wants, so the customer trades the endorsement for something they want. Are those likes real?

The gaming community uses “pay to win” strategies that let players pay extra to unlock advantageous perks that help them win. But in some cases this skews the advantage toward those who pay and the game isn’t as fun for those who don’t. Is that win fair?

In journalism, there is a temptation to grant “pay to play” favoritism to companies that pay to advertise in the publication, and reject stories about those companies that don’t pay. Is that fair and objective reporting? (Pay to play is rejected by the Society of Professional Journalists Ethics Code)

Without Ethics, Pay to Play Makes Good Sense (It Makes Money!)

Pay to play is a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” arrangement that may seem so attractive that it’s tempting to bypass our ethical responsibilities.

Ethical leaders avoid the temptation and earn trust through fair dealings with people while following the ethics codes of their professions. They do the work to do it right. Now that’s real leadership.

Prepare Your Leaders For Ethical Leadership Future – Help Them Learn To See Through The 7 Lenses®.

Learn how ethical expectations are increasing, and what you can do to stay ahead of the curve.

Is your organization crystal clear about what good leadership requires? Are you helping leaders get there? Use these articles as the basis for conversations that will clear things up going in to the New Year.

Prepare Your Leaders For Ethical Leadership Future – Help Them Learn To See Through The 7 Lenses®.

This post is Part 2 in a series called “5 Insights Into Leadership Development Future.” Each post in this series will address trends in leadership development and how to prepare leaders for success in a complex, connected global society (In case you missed it, Part 1addressed trends in ethical awareness, leading with values and changes in the learning landscape).

GIVE LEADERS THE WHOLE PICTURE

We are beginning to think more holistically about the leadership role, including its global scope and broad impact. Today I want to describe the important trend toward wholeness that is helping us improve our effectiveness in many arenas and will be changing our approach to leadership development.

Have you noticed that:

In health care, we are moving away from just treating symptoms to supporting wellness

In the workplace, we are moving away from focusing on treating specific individual groups of people well toward a goal of full inclusion

In education, we are (slowly) beginning to embrace preparing the whole child for a good life rather than focusing only on knowledge and test scores

In religion, we are beginning to understand common values, rather than focusing only on separate religious traditions

In business, we are beginning to think about ourselves as one global community rather than just a disparate set of countries and boundaries

This trend toward wholeness is informing approaches to leadership development in important ways. To see how well you’re helping leaders adapt to this trend, ask yourself:

Are we giving leaders the whole picture and expanding their awareness of how things connect? Are we helping them see global patterns and trends? – Help Them See the Connections

Are we developing them as whole leaders, addressing their thinking processes and habits and not just their observable skills? – Help Them Understand Their Own Leadership Terrain

Are we giving them a holistic picture of leadership responsibility and not just focusing on laws and ethics codes? – Help Them See the Full Scope of Ethical Leadership Responsibility

Applying the trend toward wholeness to the way we develop leaders can have powerful positive effects. For example, we can help leaders examine and improve their leadership thinking – to find out where they might be thinking narrowly and not holistically.

Marian N. Ruderman, Cathleen Clerkin, and Carol Connolly From The Center For Creative Leadership extend an invitation in their white paperLeadership Development Beyond Competencies: Moving to a Holistic Approach– “We call upon leadership developers to work together as a concerned community, to move beyond the established competency approach to offer deeper levels of leadership development.”

Specific Actions You Can Take Now to Help Leaders Adapt:

Address leader learning on the internal as well as external aspects of leadership, helping leaders learn to manage their unconscious thoughts and become aware of how their thoughts can affect their behavior

Help leaders understand the dimensions of what it means to take responsibility in leadership

Get them talking about the places where they are observing a trend toward wholeness, and the impact of this trend on their lives and leadership

More to Come: I will be continuing this series with more important trends in leadership development and actions you can take to help leaders adapt. Stay tuned for Part 3!

Prepare Your Leaders For Ethical Leadership Future – Help Them Learn To See Through The 7 Lenses®.

Includes how ethical expectations are increasing, and what you can do to stay ahead of the curve.

While we are experiencing many global challenges, there is also a gradual global push toward better leadership.

There are many trends moving us toward a point where we clearly understand “leadership” to include good ethics and exclude any behavior that is purely self-serving or harmful to others.

We have seen enough people making poor ethical decisions in the name of “leadership” to realize that we need to change something. Some people may even think that things have gotten so bad that the term “leadership” should be replaced.

I disagree. Our understanding of what leadership means is evolving, so we shouldn’t throw out the word and replace it with a new one. We should continue the movement toward clearly re-defining it at a higher level.

What does redefining leadership at a higher level mean?

When we say “leadership,” we will automatically include ethical responsibilities along with opportunities and benefits.

When we say “leadership,” we will think “a privilege to serve” and not “a position of power.”

When we say “leadership,” we will think of the most humble, dedicated people who, working with others, try to leave the world better than they found it.

With this higher level understanding of leadership, we will never mistake a greedy, dishonest, fraudulent , harmful, toxic or care-less person who happens to have a title for a real leader. We will not be distracted by smoke and mirrors. We will look for substance and service.

I am optimistic and I believe that this is the future of leadership.

What do you think? Are you ready to redefine leadership at a higher level? Are you ready to separate self-serving psuedo-leadership from real leadership?

Bring Out Your Leadership Best: Learn To See Through 7 Lenses®.

Includes how ethical expectations are increasing, and what you can do to stay ahead of the curve.

A for-profit company is an integral part of the global community, and its role is to provide value-creating services through the good work of good people.

Good companies, like good citizens, make a commitment to positive purpose, positive intent and positive impact. That means that they do what’s right in the right way, showing concern for constituents and silent stakeholders.

People have tried shortcuts that go around respect, civility and tolerance, but there is no acceptable shortcut on the road to profit (or power) that “goes around ethics.” — Linda Fisher Thornton

Good leaders don’t divide the world – they don’t treat people well only when it’s convenient or profitable. They treat people well because that is what good people do. Morally developed leaders understand that despite our differences, we are all part of the same group – the human group. Treating people that way build good neighborhoods and communities, on a local and global scale.

Shortcuts won’t get you there. Good leaders know that the road to profit leads through good work, good leadership and good ethics. While it’s tempting to take shortcuts, our global understanding of “good leadership” is moving past a self-centered view of things. It’s time for leaders to step up.

Read more insights from Trust Across America Trust Alliance Members and Top Thought Leaders in this post on theFCPA Blog.

Prepare Your Leaders For Ethical Leadership Future – Help Them Learn To See Through The 7 Lenses®.

Learn how ethical expectations are increasing, and how to stay ahead of the curve.

This article explores ethical failures and their individual and organizational causes.

It answers these leadership questions:

What are the intentional and unintentional causes of ethical failures?

What do you do when a senior leader isn’t meeting ethical expectations?

What culture gaps can lead to ethical failures?

Read the full article at Leaderonomics.com for answers to these important questions (Get an infographic-style version of the article by clicking the red PDF download button).

Why are the answers to these questions important for us to know if we want to build an ethical workplace? Understanding what causesethical failures can help us build a more robust infrastructure for preventing them.

Prepare Your Leaders For Ethical Leadership Future – Help Them Learn To See Through The 7 Lenses®.

Includes how ethical expectations are increasing, and what you can do to stay ahead of the curve.

While I specialize in positive, proactive ethical leadership, I frequently get asked questions about unethical leadership. In particular, readers ask about the damage that toxic leaders do in organizations and what situations and circumstances lead to ethical failures.

While we need to stay focused on the positive, preventive aspects of our leadership, understanding what not to do can also help us stay within the boundaries of positive ethical leadership. Today I’m sharing posts that describe what leadership looks like when it is unethical.

“We can no longer evaluate a person’s leadership solely on results while ignoring the negative ripple effect created by interpersonal behavior choices. It’s time to see toxic leadership for what it really is – stress creating, inappropriate, negative, unethical leadership.”

Linda Fisher Thornton, Leading in Context Blog, Can a Toxic Leader Be Ethical? Yes and No.

If you recognize any of these signs of unethical behavior or toxic leadership in your organization, don’t wait. Take positive action now.

Help Your Leaders Cut Through Complexity By Learning To See Through The 7 Lenses.

I wonder what our workplaces would be like if every leader cared. Most leaders care about their own well-being. But what if every leader cared about others? How would things be different?

In an organization where every leader cared, wouldn’t we experience improved employee engagement and customer retention? Wouldn’t it be easier to recruit and retain talented and dedicated employees? Wouldn’t we be able to get more done?

If Every Leader Cared

Employees would pass the care they received on to coworkers, customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders.

Those happy coworkers, customers, suppliers and other stakeholders would pass the care on…

And we would all approach our work with more empathy and understanding

Each worker could accomplish more with caring support

And the organization would be more efficient and effective

Attracting customers, suppliers, and partners who cared…

This video is a great conversation starter about the importance of care and empathy for others. Use it to have conversations today about what it means to provide caring leadership in your organization.

I’ve named some scenarios that could happen in an organization where every leader cared. What would you add?

Prepare Your Leaders For Ethical Leadership Future – Help Them Learn To See Through The 7 Lenses.

In a recent post, I acknowledged that “leaders face information overload, globalization and increasing complexity. And they hold the key to your organization’s future. Make it a priority to help them be ready.”

How can we prepare leaders to succeed in a socially and globally connected world? What are the strategies that will help them handle a wide variety of unpredictable situations while making ethical choices?

There are specific strategies that will help your leadership team prepare for the future. Organizations employing these strategies will help leaders S-T-R-E-T-C-H to stay on top of changing expectations.

BE CLEAR – KEEP IT RELEVANT – GROUND LEARNING IN ETHICAL VALUES

To prepare leaders to make confident values-based choices, leadership development needs to be clear and based on positive ethical values. To make it worth the time spent participating, every aspect must be relevant to meeting their current challenges.

EMBRACE COMPLEXITY – HONOR LEARNING TRENDS – USE A GROWTH MINDSET

Leaders need support as they learn to embrace complexity (and seek meaning in an age of information overload).We will need to use a growthmindset, letting leaders know that we understand that learning to lead responsibly is a lifelong journey. We will need to honor learning trends and acknowledge that in many cases, leaders can be the architects of their own learning.

BUILD TRUST – WELCOME OPEN DIALOGUE

Welcoming open dialogue about any aspect of leadership will help leaders feel comfortable asking questions. If we are going to make responsible leadership a way of life in our organization, we will also need to help them steep their leadership in mutual trust – which includes trusting others and being a trustworthy leader.

THINK AHEAD – PREPARE THEM FOR “LEADERSHIP FUTURE”

If we prepare leaders to handle today’s problems, that doesn’t mean they will be ready to handle the problems of tomorrow. The solution? Aim well ahead of the curve of change, to where the field of leadership is headed.

Leaders need a strong infrastructure grounded in ethical values and lots of opportunities for learning and conversation. With the pace of change accelerating, how does leadership development need to change? We must prepare leaders for where they’re going to be (not just where they are now) and help them stay competent in a rapidly changing world.